Going Home
by Eve215
Summary: This is a one shot to Asian Angel'07's "Watching one Die" challenge. Rosalie hears that her isolated mother is ill. All Rose, some Emmett.


A/N: This story is in response to Asian Angel07's FF challenge "Watching One Die" This story is about the death of Rosalie's mother. It is a one shot. I hope I'm posting this in the right place.

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. Stephenie Meyer does.

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The house was just as I remembered. Large oak trees stood commandingly at the four corners of the white, two story mansion. Well, in my day it had been a mansion. One of the largest in all Rochester. A house fit for society, for royalty. And royalty was what we thought we were. It was what I was taught. What I was bred to be. I was the pretty one, the enchanting one. The apple of my parents' eye. My two little brothers were loved, of course. But neither Seth nor the least Aaron could compare to me to my parents. All their hopes were endowed to me. In the midst of the depression, I had been the shining light for my family. Beautiful, lovely, graceful, a winning ticket to ensuring a rich husband to take care of not only me, but my family should something else happen to the banks.

That was in 1933 when all the hopes in the world were lied on my shoulders by my mother and father. Looking back, I realize they weren't mean, evil people. They were simply staking their claim to a better future. Who could fault them for that?

Nineteen Thirty-three was also the year my world collapsed. It was the year of my death. The year of my new birth. The year I became a monster. It was also the last time I had seen any of my family.

I heard rumors, of course, everybody hears rumors, about how my family was making out. In 1944, my youngest brother Aaron, the one who looked the closest like me, died tragically in the war. I heard that my mother nearly passed herself from the grief of losing yet another child. In 1946, my other brother Seth, who looked more like my father with dark black hair and a stiff upper lip, committed suicide after he lost all his money in a bogus business deal. My mother's heartbreak continued six years later when my father, Samuel Hale, died of lung problems. There wasn't a term at the time to describe it accurately.

So my mother lived in solitude for the rest of her days, so I was told. The only people in or out were the maids and cooks, the same ones we had when I had lived there, then those, too dwindled.

By the time 1959 came, my mother was 63 years old and confined to her bed with an ailment that the doctor couldn't identify right away. Upon hearing this news, I left my dear Emmett and my new family and went back to the place of my change, the place Carlisle found me 26 years before.

Like I said, the house hadn't changed to me in it's grandeur. It had, however, changed from a stately estate into a home plagued with the beginnings of decay. With only my sick mother to oversee it, it was badly in need of repairs. But, even on this cloudy day, I felt at home.

I had only meant to stay a minute. To look at her one last time before she got to do the thing I coveted most... to die. When I walked onto the wrap around porch and saw the sign on the door Warning! Do not Enter! Tuberculosis. House Quarantined. My never beating heart sank. I could hear her heartbeat, so I knew she was alive in the house, but I also realized she was alone and would be alone until she died when someone would come and probably burn her if not the house.

My old room was on the first floor. Mother's on the second. Quietly as I could, I climbed in the window to my room and stood in awe. In my room, there wasn't a speck of dust. The bed was made just as I had left it on that fateful night. My dolls, my precious porcelain dolls were neatly placed in a row on my dresser. My hairbrush, shiny silver, sat next to my matching handheld mirror on the vanity next to my window. Everything was pristine. Everything was like it was awaiting my arrival home like nothing had ever happened.

And the smell. I had been gone over two decades, but the sweet smell was still there. The scent of roses, the flowers Royce had sent me during our very short courtship. The flowers that had made me fall for him... no, it wasn't the flowers. It was the King name I was getting and the security for my family I fell for. I sincerely hoped Royce himself was burning in Hell right now and still conscious to the fact that I put him there.

The sweet smell of roses lingered as I silently crept into the hall and up the creaking stairs to Mother's room. I didn't want to scare her. I didn't even really want her to see me, but if she needed anything, seeing as she was all alone, I felt I had to do it.

If the scent of roses were prominent on the first floor, the scent of death coward on the second. At my mother's room, I could already smell it, the inhumane odors bodies leave in their dying stages. The smell of uncleaned urine and other bodily fluids ones body sees to defile it's soul with before it lets it go into the afterlife. I held my breath and opened the door.

It was worse than I imagined. My mother lay looking out her window, confined to her bed which was soaked with the before mentioned stench. But to my puzzlement, she had a contended, even happy, smile on her face. I couldn't fathom what would make her so happy, so content with her current predicament. I was so lost in my pondering that I accidentally made a noise causing her to look at me.

Her eyes widened with shock and amazement. She reached her arms out to me as best she could and had a grin that broke my heart. "Rosalie! You came home!"

"Yes, I'm home mother." I couldn't move though. I didn't want her to feel me, not like this. Not in my new vampire form.

"Come here, child. Let Mother look at you."

"I'm sorry, Mother. But it's best I don't."

She nodded sadly. "I see, child. I know what I have. The doctor did all kinds of tests. But I already knew. Nobody's came since and I can't get out of bed. When are they coming back?" She didn't wait for my response. "Doesn't matter. You're here now."

I looked her over and found myself having to control my urge to kill the bastards who had left her like this. But in their selfish little minds, what would they do? Here was an older widow with hardly any money left with a very contagious disease. No human in their right mind would come visit, and she had no money left for a TB hospital. So she was left alone, to die an undignified death... like I had. I couldn't let her do it.

I ignored my preconceptions and made myself go to her. Her face contorted to questioning when she saw how young I still was, how pale, how smooth. "Child, are you... are you a ghost?"

"No, Mother." I found a weak laugh. "I'm not a ghost. I'm just here to help you." When my hands touched her, she screamed in terror. "What are you!" She called becoming hysterical.

"Mother! Mother calm down. Calm down! It's me. It's Rose. I'm just a little... cold that's all. Please. Don't fret."

She settled down. I'm not sure if it was because she knew that I posed her no threat or if she wasn't completely sure I wasn't a ghost come to take her home. In any case, she allowed me to pick her up, take her to the bath and wash her. While she soaked, I placed clean sheets on her bed and threw the old ones out, hoping the would infect the heathens who left my mother here all alone. Once done, I went back in and washed her once blond locks and put her on some clean clothes. She smiled the entire time. I'm sure the soak and clean clothes felt heavenly to her. She looked so fragile, like she hadn't eaten in a week. I'm sure it was about that amount of time she hadn't. I picked her back up, laid her on the bed, and started to exit to get her some food.

She stopped me. "Rosalie, don't leave me. Please."

"I won't, Mother. I'll just get you some food."

She laughed lightly. "Where I'm going, I don't need food." Then she coughed the worst cough I had heard in my live, even worse than Royce had given out when I ripped a certain body part off. Blood poured from the crease of her mouth and her eyes rolled back. The blood didn't bother me. I had never had human blood and never wanted it. I had been a vampire long enough not to let myself be pulled in by it. I did, however, know that time was running short.

"What do you need?" I asked like a pitiful child begging their parent for something.

"I only need you. I know what you are." a bright smile filled her face.

"You do?"

"Yes." She held her hand out for me to take it. I hesitated because the clouds had dissipated and sunbeams now streaked on her bed. She would not be denied, however, and grabbed my hand herself. Once it hit the sun, thousands of sparkles shined throughout the room. My mother only sighed happily. "You are an angel."

I held in the dark laugh that threatened to erupt from me. I was far from an angel. But if an angel was what she needed, an angel is what I would be.

"Tell me something," she went on. "What is Heaven like?"

"I don't know." I answered honestly. "I mostly stay down here."

"Have you been watching over me long?"

"Ever since 1933." I gave a half-hearted laugh. I saw her face wrinkle then understanding fill it.

"They found those boys, Royce's friends. They were dead. Did you..."

I ran my icy fingers though her silky clean hair. "Hush, Mother. An angel wouldn't do anything like that."

She seemed pleased with my answer. Fully convinced that her Rosalie would never become a murderer herself.

"Can you do something for me?"

"Anything." she answered as her breathing labored.

"Can you tell Father and Seth and Aaron if you see them that I love them and miss them horribly?"

"I will, but won't you see them too?"

I paused, waiting for my voice to come back and not betray me. "I told you, Mother. I have work to do here on Earth. Please tell them for me."

"I will." she nodded as another cough consumed her.

I held her hand, and for once, the cold didn't seem to bother her. "Mother," I hesitated. "Were you proud of me?"

She laughed weakly, touching my face ever so lightly. "Child, always. You never let me down. Especially not now that you came back so I don't have to die alone. I'm so glad you came to me." She smiled at me one last time, and her eyes closed forever.

I leaned down and kissed her gently on her forehead. "I love you." I whispered before pulling her clean white sheet over her face.

I wanted to go and take my revenge on someone. Maybe the doctor who condemned her to die alone. Maybe the maids or cooks that should have helped her even to the very end. But I didn't. My mother thought of me as an angel sent by God to help her crossover to the other side, and I would not defy that memory, that last pleasant memory she had of me.

I made my way home and, once there, folded myself up in Emmett's waiting arms. I sobbed tearless cries for the loss of my mother, and the loss of the last link to my ever fading humanity.


End file.
